Lesson: Getting at the Truth

Words and generalizations are a match made in heaven. You ask people a question like “does status really matter” and you will get the standard therapeutic B.S. The point is, almost like the doctor knee toy hammering test, people have an autonomous dissembling reflex. You need to beat this. The important point to learn is the truth bubbles up extemporaneously, almost like a Freudian slip, you generally can’t get an honest answer by trying to get at it directly.

When I went to a psychiatrist in Wisconsin they gave me a bipolar worksheet (because I was a bipolar). One of the worksheets was a checklist for looking for signs of mania. A lot of them were the typical fare, like were you happy for no reason, or did you think people could read your mind. There was one that I was particularly drawn to. It said, “I thought I could change the world”. Implying that, of course you can’t.

If the general is a person, the specific is an alien that bursts out of her chest (I didn’t see the Alien movies but that’s about all I know about them). I wanted to live on my own and asking wasn’t getting me anywhere so I found a specific place that was for rent. That forced my parents’ hand and they said I could not live on my own. I wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was getting from people with regards to status really mattering. So I spent $8 to reserve a place at a Wheaton alumni gathering (I went to that school and it’s pretty selective so alumni are generally very vocationally successful). My parents wouldn’t give me a ride there because they knew how bad I would be treated (an ignored email from a former close friend from college who dropped out of my life because of low status portended to this).

The point is, the therapeutic-industrial complex has made finding the truth more difficult but you can beat it if you find creative ways to tease it out.

Also the therapeutic-industrial complex would tell me to give people the benefit of the doubt and not accuse them of ignoring me for being low status. This is on purpose. They are all about shielding people of power and privilege. The good old Calvinist depravity of man idea just doesn’t serve those in power well anymore.